Chapter 4 Reflection

Kelvin Paez
Ms.Benjamin
3-4 A
28 February 16
  I am a firm believer that economic status or class contributes to an individual's success greatly. I believe so because, it can give a clear advantage to that person compared to the not as fortunate. For example, in the business world, if a person already comes from a wealthy background they have something to fall back on, however for the ones at the lower classes do not have that privilege. To add to, the richer do not need to rely on loans while the poorer usually, rely heavily on banks as for their kick-starter. For the unprivileged, they business is going to start really slow with such debt on their backs while, it may be the opposite for the ones who did not rely on the loans as much.
  Moreover, being born in the higher working class one is taught many skills that one in the lower classes are not taught. In he book, Gladwell talks about these two people Chris Langan and Robert Oppenheimer. Langan grew up very poor while, Oppenheimer was much more fortunate. Langan had a tough childhood and learned to cope with the hardships that come that enter throughout one's life. However Oppenheimer, had "pratical knowledge" in which is a kind of skill that allows a person to talk their way out of trouble, this was a valuable skill that he had. Oppenheimer was so good with this, he was ble to get away form poisoning his own teacher. As a result, this man was able to use his social skills and speak up to stand out in society and eventually become successful while, Langan could have achieved much more.
  Furthermore, this idea can also apply to athletics, somewhat. For example, for track, better teams and runners seems to be evident with schools that have more funding. These teams obviously, have better and more equipment, an actual track to practice in, and more importantly, better and several coaches. While other schools like mine's or SPHS, have to run in our school hallways for practice, only have one coach, little and poor equipment, and not enough funding to go to all of our meets. Therefore, the ones with more funded teams can will have a much higher chance of having faster runners because of thee school's economic situation. However, smaller budget schools could still have good runners but only to an extent.